Hi guys, Before I begin, I will say that I did read through some posts similar to mine here, so wasn't just lazy about asking this... Basically I am looking for a Keyboard that has a good strong piano, organ and rhodes sound, 61 keys and has MIDI capabilities. I'm assuming this is a 'workstation' of some sort? I recently got a Roland Juno D, second hand, and it was a bad experience. I got it home and half the keys didn't work. Great. So I'm taking it back to the seller tomorrow, but am of course now put off the Juno D, as it may not keep well... So what keyboards should I look at? My price range isn't mega, which doesn't help. I picked up the Juno D for £200, which is basically $325, and that was with a stand, gigbag and mediocre amp (which I wasn't looking for, but shows what I got for the money). I had a look at the Korg M50, but it seems out of my price range... One other small factor is that I really liked the size of the Juno D. It is quite shallow and doesn't have a stupid amount of buttons. Maybe I'm being too picky for the money? Any help would be greatly appreciated. James
There's no such thing as a stupid amount of buttons. You can just ignore the ones you don't like. In my opinion, the M50 is WAY better than the Juno series. The Juno and M50 are 'budget' versions of their manufacturer's workstations, except that the M50 has exactly the same sound engine as Korg's pro-level workstation, the M3, and is lacking only in other features, while the Juno sounds much worse than the Fantom series. If you want a realistic-sounding piano, go with the M50. The one thing you'll be stuck on with any workstation other than the Korg OASYS is organs. Workstations can have good organ sounds, but you don't get the control over them that you would with an organ simulator of some sort with drawbars (i.e. Nord Stage or Nord Electro, Korg BX-3 and CX-3, etc.) If you only want to use classic sounds and don't need much in the way of strings, brass, synths, and so on, you might want to check out the new Korg SV-1 as well (though it's 73 or 88 keys and approaching $2k US).
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, as incredible as the SV-1 looks, it's miles out of my price range. If I could spend thousands, I would get a Nord or one of them, but I just can't. The only problem with the M50 is the price! I got my Juno D for $325, whereas I haven't seen an M50, even second hand go for under $600, so these really aren't in the same league surely? Any other workstations in the budget range? I sound like a tight-arse, but I have spent thousands on my guitar set-up, and I am a student, so really I've got to keep it cheapish. Any other suggestions? Perhaps an older model that is a bit timeless but discontinued, that I may be able to pick up cheap on ebay? James
You can probably find an old Korg Triton on Ebay, I did a small search and found a few 61 key Tritons for about $400. Might be worth looking in to.
I've got a Yamaha Motif rack, and I quite like the Piano and Rhodes sounds in it. I also don't mind the organ, but most people say it's unplayable (but they usually have a nord, or hammond xk-3c or something). Anyway you could look for a used Yamaha Motif 61 key keyboard, or get a rack and a cheap M-audio controller. Might be a bit out of your price range though... you seriously aren't gonna get anything good for under $600, even that's pushing it.
This probably goes for any keyboard, but when I was looking the floor model Juno D I played with seemed to have a few issues regarding whether or not the keys would be octave-shifted on you. Also, there were a few keys that didn't seem to play correctly for some instruments, as you went up and down the keyboard. Hopefully these issues have been corrected by now (or can be corrected via a firmware patch).
